Perhaps one day there will be a monument to all the brave teachers who sacrificed their lives trying to keep alive the light of education in Thailand's strife-ridden southern provinces.
Violence returns to Ban Tanyong School in Narathiwat’sBacho district. In 2008, two buildings at theschool werereduced to ruins in an arson attack. Earlier this month, Chonlathee Charoenchol, a teacher, wasshot dead in front of his students during lunch.
But who could blame a teacher for not wanting to teach there now?
The latest victim is Chonlathee Charoenchol, who was shot dead in front of his students during lunch at Ban Tanyong School in Narathiwat province on Jan 23.
The Malay border area is indeed distant from Bangkok, but what transpires there is ignored at the peril of the nation as a whole. Pak tai has a strong regional identity with unique problems near the border. There have been tensions between ethnic Thais and ethnic Malays ever since the Sultanate of Pattani was incorporated into Thailand proper in 1909, but for the most part, social tensions were low-level and manageable.
The shocking upsurge in the cycle of violence that has cut down over 5,000 lives since 2004 is a blight on the nation. The systemic cruelty of insurgents who deliberately single out teachers and representatives of civil society is abhorrent. It is hard to find anything to say much about such cold-blooded insurgents, except perhaps to note that they too were once children and if they went to school, they owe a debt to teachers, whether they recognise it or not.
The war in the South is an existential threat to the nation's coherence as a whole. It puts the "Land of Smiles" in the top ten terror-ridden destinations in the world.
Journalistic wits have been calling Thailand the Thai-tanic ever since the economic crisis of 1997. Despite a total breakdown in navigation and a badly listing ship of state, Thai parliamentary politics still seems to consist of nothing more than the shuffling and reshuffling of lounge chairs on the deck of a doomed boat. The only new twist is that deck chairs are now being sorted by colour, the ship is captained by a Skype link, gangs roam the corridors and turf battles are breaking out as the water silently rushes in below.
If elected officials have been too busy playing power games to notice that the nation is in peril, one might at least expect bureaucrats and career professionals in the army and police to be focused on the job, but they too are caught up in Thailand's colour frenzy.
Chuan Leekpai is the last prime minister of Thailand under whose leadership the South was more or less at peace with the rest of the country. Things did not tumble out of control until the Thaksin war on drugs.
The currently "hot" border provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani (but not Trang for reasons worth researching) have been the locus of resistance against Bangkok. This is not just about Islamism; the border area was also a stronghold for the Communist Party of Thailand and their Malay allies.
In the South, it would seem, crimes of the state are more likely to be met with organised resistance than other regions, but the technique of fighting back is in itself brutal. The separatist resistance has been warped and distorted into the perfidy we see today, in the form of an insane insurgency that shoots teachers in front of kids.
If the Thai-tanic is listing, the Tai-tanic, the southernmost tip, is just about sunk.
The fuse for the fai-tai or "fire in the South" was ignited during the cruel and capricious campaign of provincial violence in 2003 in a so-called "war on drugs". Extrajudicial killings were the norm, and arbitrary provincial quotas came into play in an orchestrated orgy of violence. Those actions can be traced to the careless and cavalier political machinations of the man prosecuting the drug war, a man whose name, Thaksin, just happens to mean "South".
This was the first, and the most rotten, plank in the now-famed Shinawatra populism. Thaksin's 2003 war on drugs, diabolical though it was, found a ready and supportive audience among a frustrated public worried about the drug scourge in society at the time. High and low alike cheered him on in callous disregard to due process, legal rights and victim's lives, as long as government actions fed the perception that drug dealers were being snuffed out.
The poor and disenfranchised in Isan were easy targets, disproportionately, in the war on drugs, as they lacked effective redress or links to power. In contrast, radical underground organisations in the deep South, already practiced in skirmishes with the army, easily stoked by race hatred and a militant disposition, openly challenged the Thaksin administration with a call to arms.
Jan 4, 2004 saw the long-simmering discontent break out into open hatred and violence in the form of a deadly Muslim insurgent raid on an ammo depot in Narathiwat. Thaksin's first response was to say the negligent army guards who were killed in the raid "deserved to die".
Over the next two years, Thaksin called in the troops and the police and provided lots of ammo as he presided over a hot conflict that saw senseless killing on both sides.
Krue Se mosque in Pattani was stormed by Thaksin subordinates in April 2004, despite calls for restraint by veteran politician and Defence Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who was later denied a meaningful role in the South. Senator Kraisak Choonhavan and human rights groups cried foul play, but there was no accountability.
Half a year later, 84 young men died in the Tak Bai incident, not in the heat of battle, but after arrest, due to brutal and inhumane treatment as suspects were tied up and stacked in trucks and left, cold-heartedly or carelessly, to die in the heat of the sun.
Thaksin defended the army, saying the protesters were "weak from Ramadan fasting".
The disappearance and suspected murder of human rights activist and lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit also happened on Thaksin's watch that same year, a disgrace to the quality of justice in the realm. Thaksin's remark at the time? "Don't worry, I understand he had a fight with his wife. He'll be back in a day or two."
Thaksin personally took "control" of the conflict zone in 2005, suspending constitutional rights in the region and directing a crackdown.
The effect was like putting oil on fire. Ever since, the conflict has raged out of control, violence engendering more violence, revenge engendering more revenge. Subsequent prime ministers have tried and failed to put out the flames. Once the fuse was lit, the fire continued to burn, out of control, as it does today.
One cannot blame PM Yingluck for the smouldering situation she inherited in the South, but one can blame her for allowing her discredited and fugitive brother to run her administration long distance. If she is content to be a "proxy" and a "remote control" (Thaksin's words) then she has no self-respect, nor does the nation, and she should be replaced in a no-confidence motion.
The devastation wrought by bad policy in the South is tragic, almost beyond repair, but the killing has to stop and an accommodation reached. It is disappointing that prominent Thai Muslims such as Wan Mohamad Noor Matha and Sonthi Boonyaratglin have been no more successful than their Buddhist colleagues in cracking the problem, but perhaps something useful can be learned from that. Maybe the fire in the South is not primarily about religion, but something else. After all, millions of Thais who follow the Muslim faith live contentedly and peaceably in Bangkok and just about every province in Thailand.
The insurgents, meanwhile, kill Muslims who refuse to toe their line with the same alacrity as they target Buddhists; the most recent victim of a teacher shooting, Khru Chonlathee, was a Muslim.
The Thai press is repeatedly filled with indignant rumblings about the great injustice of the Preah Vihear case. That an old temple straddling the Isan border be internationally recognised as Cambodian territory has long rankled, and continues to rankle.
Thai patriots hate to see the beloved nation lose a single blade of grass, let along a stone temple and a few square kilometres.
What, then, of the Thai South? Are three entire provinces to be ignored, neglected and jettisoned just like that? Where is the outrage? Where are the demonstrations in solidarity with fallen teachers, monks, soldiers, shopkeepers and villagers?
The ruins at Preah Vihear are magnificent and inspiring, but their builders have been dead for a thousand years. The temple, patiently perched on a cliff in the wilderness, can wait.
What about the living? What about the infants, the children of the South, the innocent civilians, the courageous teachers? What about the Muslims loyal to the state, the peaceful practitioners of Buddhism? Where's the concern? Where's the humanity?
Philip J Cunningham is media researcher covering Asian politics.